‘This is the last year.’ My Pa says the same thing every year, pulling on his cracked old work boots and getting ready for another day running his small farm on the outskirts of Dubbo, NSW. Even at 80 years old, he hasn’t given up the family tradition of being a fruit farmer, not even … Continue reading A Life of Drought
Moving back to Melbourne, Avery didn't know how hard it would be to find a home ... The first house is on the edge of Thornbury and Northcote. The driveway pulls out onto a busy road. I know where the house is, when I first move in, because there’s a graffitied mattress across the street. … Continue reading Renting
When a post popped up in my inbox from Grattan Street Press about The M Project, I was delighted to read that, according to GSP’s definition, I am a millennial! Just. I was delighted because this fact made me feel young. Since returning to study, I feel exactly three hundred years older than most other … Continue reading Book Babies and Actual Babies
It felt like Christmas at my house when Dad announced that he’d bought a 500-hour block of internet. This was around 1997: I was thirteen years old and the whole world had been put at my fingertips. It was well before wireless networks, back when you had to dial in on a computer that was … Continue reading Talking to Strangers
I picked up my phone and stared at my screen frivolously: no new messages. Bored out of my mind, I did the rounds of all my social media. The usual: Snapchat, Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, and finally, my favourite binging app, Instagram. As I skimmed through my friends’ stories, a small feeling of guilt took over … Continue reading Digital Dilemma: When is it too much?
The M Project was created to give a voice to a generation of young people who’d been misunderstood and disregarded simply for being a millennial. Stigma has surrounded that word for years, labelling us as lazy, technology obsessed and entitled among other things, even while we established ourselves as a culturally aware, technologically innovative and … Continue reading YOUNG ADULT-ISH: RETHINKING THE M WORD
‘I’ll still be at home when I’m 30.’ My friend and I both chuckled over our smashed avocados, light-heartedly lamenting our stereotypical spending choices: ‘If only brunch wasn’t so expensive!’ Yet we laughed because we were joking; eventually we’d curb our brunch habits and start paying rent, because neither of us actually planned on living … Continue reading TO SHARE OR NOT TO SHARE
We sit in the middle of Carlton Gardens. The Royal Exhibition Building looms in front of us, the sky blue behind it. I can hear rushing cars, rushing trams, rushing water from the fountain. Everything moving around us. It’s nice to be slow. He unpacks a feast between us––chunks of feta, slices of bread, sundried … Continue reading Love in the Time of Cancer
‘Abbu, I saw a counsellor today,’ I said, clutching the corner of the kitchen counter top. I waited for my dad’s response, feeling a little too hopeful. How could I think telling my dad I was having mental health issues would evoke the sensitivity I deserve? It was nothing against him personally, he is my … Continue reading Unmuting Mental Health: Breaking the Taboo at Home
The owner of Melbourne’s soon-to-be erstwhile Cherry Bar is hard to miss: after all, he wears a big hat. (Indoors? Indoors.) Although one doesn’t really make out faces from any stage, anywhere–unless there aren’t any faces all, delivering you from the challenge–trademark silhouettes travel well, in spite of distance or dazzling lighting. Impossibly, some manner … Continue reading A Lament to Cherry
